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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Kings 14:21 - 14:21
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Reign of Rehoboam in Judah (compare 2 Chron 11:5-12:16). - 1Ki 14:21. Rehoboam, who ascended the throne at the age of forty-one, was born a year before the accession of Solomon (see at 1Ki 2:24). In the description of Jerusalem as the city chosen by the Lord (cf., 1Ki 11:36) there is implied not so much an indirect condemnation of the falling away of the ten tribes, as the striking contrast to the idolatry of Rehoboam referred to in 1Ki 14:23. The name of his mother is mentioned (here and in 1Ki 14:31), not because she seduced the king to idolatry (Ephr. Syr.), but generally on account of the great influence which the queen-mother appears to have had both upon the king personally and upon his government, as we may infer from the fact that the mother's name is given in the case of every king of Judah (vid., 1Ki 15:2, 1Ki 15:13; 1Ki 22:42, etc.).
1Ki 14:22-24
The general characteristics of Rehoboam's reign are supplied and more minutely defined in the account in the Chronicles. According to 2 Chron 11:5-12:1, he appears to have been brought to reflection by the announcement of the prophet, that the falling away of the ten tribes had come from the Lord as a punishment for Solomon's idolatry (1Ki 12:23-24; 2Ch 11:2-4); and in the first years of his reign to have followed the law of God with earnestness, and to have been occupied in the establishment of his government partly by the fortification of different cities (2Ch 11:5-12), and partly by setting in order his domestic affairs, placing his numerous sons, who were born of his many wives and concubines, in the fortified cities of the land, and thus providing for them, and naming Abijam as his successor (2Ch 11:18-22); while his kingdom was still further strengthened by the priests, Levites, and pious Israelites who emigrated to Judah and Jerusalem from the ten tribes (2Ch 11:13-17). But this good beginning only lasted three years (2Ch 11:17). When he thought that he had sufficiently fortified his kingdom, he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel (i.e., all the covenant nation) with him (2Ch 12:1). “Judah did that which was displeasing in the sight of the Lord; they provoked Him to jealousy more than all that their fathers (sc., under the Judges) had done with their sins.” קִנֵּא, to provoke to jealousy (Num 5:14), is to be explained, when it refers to God, from the fact that the relation in which God stood to His people was regarded under the figure of a marriage, in which Jehovah appears as the husband of the nation, who is angry at the unfaithfulness of his wife, i.e., at the idolatry of the nation. Compare the remarks on קַנָּא אֵל in the Comm. on Exo 20:5.
1Ki 14:23
They also (the Judaeans as well as the Israelites) built themselves bamoth, altars of high places (see at 1Ki 3:3), monuments and Ashera-idols. מַצֵּבֹות are not actual images of gods, but stones set up as memorials (Gen 31:13; Gen 35:20; Exo 24:4), more especially stone monuments set up in commemoration of a divine revelation (Gen 28:18, Gen 28:22; Gen 35:14). Like the bamoth, in connection with which they generally occur, they were originally dedicated to Jehovah; but even under the law they were forbidden, partly as places of divine worship of human invention which easily degenerated into idolatry, but chiefly because the Canaanites had erected such monuments to Baal by the side of his altars (Exo 23:24; Exo 34:13; Deu 7:5, etc.), whereby the worship of Jehovah was unconsciously identified with the worship of Baal, even when the mazzeboth were not at first erected to the Canaanitish Baal. As the מַצֵּבֹות of the Canaanites were dedicated to Baal, so were the אֲשֵׁרִים to Astarte, the female nature-deity of those tribes. אֲשֵׁרָה, however, does not mean a grove (see the Comm. on Deu 16:21), but an idol of the Canaanitish nature-goddess, generally most likely a lofty wooden pillar, though sometimes perhaps a straight trunk of a tree, the branches and crown of which were lopped off, and which was planted upon heights and in other places by the side of the altars of Baal. The name אֲשֵׁרָה was transferred from the idol to the goddess of nature (1Ki 15:13; 1Ki 18:19; 2Ki 21:7, etc.), and was used of the image or column of the Phoenician Astarte (1Ki 16:33; 2Ki 13:6; 2Ki 17:16, etc.), just as אֲשֵׁרֹות in Jdg 3:7 alternates with עַשְׁתָּרֹות in Jdg 2:13. These idols the Israelites (? Judaeans - Tr.) appear to have also associated with the worship of Jehovah; for the external worship of Jehovah was still maintained in the temple, and was performed by Rehoboam himself with princely pomp (1Ki 14:28). “On every high hill,” etc.; see at Deu 12:2.
1Ki 14:24
“There were also prostitutes in the land.” קָדֵּשׁ is used collectively as a generic name, including both male and female hierodylae, and is exchanged for the plural in 1Ki 15:12. The male קְדֵשִׁים had emasculated themselves in religious frenzy in honour of the Canaanitish goddess of nature, and were called Galli by the Romans. They were Canaanites, who had found their way into the land of Judah when idolatry gained the upper hand (as indicated by וְגַם). “They appear here as strangers among the Israelites, and are those notorious Cinaedi more especially of the imperial age of Rome who travelled about in all directions, begging for the Syrian goddess, and even in the time of Augustine went about asking for alms in the streets of Carthage as a remnant of the Phoenician worship (de civ. Dei, vii. 26).” - Movers, p. 679. On the female קְדֵשֹׁות see the Comm. on Gen 38:21 and Deu 23:18.
This sinking into heathen abominations was soon followed by the punishment, that Judah was given up to the power of the heathen.
1Ki 14:25-27
King Shishak of Egypt invaded the land with a powerful army, conquered all the fortified cities, penetrated to Jerusalem, and would probably have put an end to the kingdom of Judah, if God had not had compassion upon him, and saved him from destruction, in consequence of the humiliation of the king and of the chiefs of the nation, caused by the admonition of the prophet Shemaiah, so that after the conquest of Jerusalem Shishak contented himself with withdrawing, taking with him the treasures of the temple and of the royal palace. Compare the fuller account of this expedition in 2Ch 12:2-9. Shishak (שִׁישַׁק) was the first king of the twenty-second (or Bubastitic) dynasty, called Sesonchis in Jul. Afric., Sesonchosis in Eusebius, and upon the monuments on which Champollion first deciphered his name, Sheshonk or Sheshenk. Shishak has celebrated his expedition against Judah by a bas-relief on the outer wall of the pillar-hall erected by him in the first palace at Karnak, in which more than 130 figures are led in cords by Ammon and the goddess Muth with their hands bound upon their backs. The lower portion of the figures of this long row of prisoners is covered by escutcheons, the border of which being provided with battlements, shows that the prisoners are symbols of conquered cities. About a hundred of these escutcheons are still legible, and in the names upon them a large number of the names of cities in the kingdom of Judah have been deciphered with tolerable certainty.
(Note: Compare Max Duncker, Gesch. des Alterthums, Bd. i. p. 909, ed. 3, and for the different copies of this bas-relief in the more recent works upon Egypt, Reutschi in Herzog's Cycl. (art. Rehoboam). The latest attempts at deciphering are those by Brugsch, Geogr. Inschriften in den ägypt. Denkmältern, ii. p. 56ff., and O. Blau, Sisaqs Zug gegen Juda aus dem Denkmale bei Karnak erläutert, in the Deutsch. morgenl. Ztschr. xv. p. 233ff. Champollion's interpretation of one of these escutcheons, in his Précis du système hierogl. p. 204, viz., Juda hammalek, “the king of Judah,” has been rejected by Lepsius and Brugsch as philologically inadmissible. Brugsch writes the name thus: Judh malk or Joud-hamalok, and identifies Judh with Jehudijeh, which Robinson (Pal. iii. p. 45) supposes to be the ancient Jehud (Jos 19:45). This Jehud in the tribe of Dan, Blau (p. 238) therefore also finds in the name; and it will not mislead any one that this city is reckoned as belonging to the tribe of Dan, since in the very same chapter (Jos 19:42) Ajalon is assigned to Dan, though it was nevertheless a fortress of Rehoboam (2Ch 11:10). But Blau has not given any explanation of the addition malk or malok, whereas Gust. Roesch takes it to be מֶלֶךְ, and supposes it to mean “Jehud of the king, namely, of Rehoboam or of Judah, on account of its being situated in Dan, which belonged to the northern kingdom.” But this is certainly incorrect. For where could the Egyptians have obtained this exact knowledge of the relation in which the tribes of the nation of Israel stood to one another?)
Shishak was probably bent chiefly upon the conquest and plundering of the cities. But from Jerusalem, beside other treasures of the temple and palace, he also carried off the golden shields that had been made by Solomon (1Ki 10:16), in the place of which Rehoboam had copper ones made for his body-guard. The guard, רָצִים, runners, are still further described as הַמֶּלֶךְ בֵּית פֶּתַח בֵּית הַ הַשֹּׁמְרִים, “who kept the door of the king's house,” i.e., supplied the sentinels for the gate of the royal palace.
1Ki 14:28
Whenever the king went into the house of Jehovah, the runners carried these shields; from which we may see that the king was accustomed to go to the temple with solemn pomp. These shields were not kept in the state-house of the forest of Lebanon (1Ki 10:17) as the golden shields were, but in the guard-chamber (תָּא; see at Eze 40:7) of the runners.
1Ki 14:29-30
Further particulars are given in 2 Chron 11 and 12 concerning the rest of the acts of Rehoboam. “There was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam the whole time (of their reign).” As nothing is said about any open war between them, and the prophet Shemaiah prohibited the attack which Rehoboam was about to make upon the tribes who had fallen away (1Ki 11:23.), מִלְחָמָה can only denote the hostile feelings and attitude of the two rulers towards one another.
1Ki 14:31
Death and burial of Rehoboam: as in the case of Solomon (1Ki 11:43). The name of the queen-mother has already been given in 1Ki 14:21, and the repetition of it here may be explained on the supposition that in the original sources employed by the author of our books it stood in this position. The son and successor of Rehoboam upon the throne is called Abijam (אֲבִיָּם) in the account before us; whereas in the Chronicles he is always called Abijah (אֲבִיָּה, 2Ch 12:16; 2Ch 13:1, etc., or אֲבִיָּהוּ, 2Ch 13:21). אֲבִיָּם, i.e., father of the sea, is unquestionably the older form of the name, which was reduced to אֲבִיָּה, and then identified with the formation from אָבִי and יָה = יָהוּ (from יְהֹוָה).